This article examines the changing dynamics of electoral competition around an increasingly salient issue in Spanish politics: immigration. We argue that, although the issue is close to a ‘valence’ one in terms of the views of the electorate, the behaviour of the three main state-wide parties – analysed with data from party manifestos for the 1993–2011 period and of electoral campaign rhetoric between 2000 and 2011 – departs from the expectations of issue ownership competition. The result for the Spanish mainstream has therefore been a recurring ambivalence between adopting clear spatial positions on the issue and playing the competence card.

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Acta Politica. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Morales, L., Pardos-Prado, S. and Ros, V. (2014), Issue
emergence and the dynamics of electoral competition around immigration in Spain, advance online publication 29 August is available online at doi: 10.1057/ap.2014.33